It’s stick season in New Hampshire; the leaves are gone, our landscape exposed; a white blanket covers everything you see. Our trees are dormant. Aren’t they? To look at them, it wouldn’t seem that trees aren’t doing much right now. But it turns out there’s more going on than meets the eye. The phenomenon of photosynthesis is well documented, we all know that plants use their leaves to convert sunlight into sugar, or carbohydrates. But that’s not the only place photosynthesis happens. “Photosynthesis can happen in plant tissues other than leaves,” as Scott Ollinger, a professor of Natural Resources at UNH tells us. Though it is weather reliant, for example trees “can’t do this if the temperatures are below freezing for extended periods of time.” And those tissues other than leaves he’s talking about? He means bark. In woody plants, a corky layer of inner bark contains chlorophyll. When sunlight can penetrate the thin outer bark of beech or white birch, or the bark of tender saplings,